You Gotta Get It Off Your Mind - Part 2
Never Lose A Thought Again
About how long do you think something stays in short-term memory? 15 – 20 seconds. In other words, if you don’t do something with a thought, you lose it in less than 30 seconds. So if you want to capture those $50,000,000 and 50 cent ideas and everything in between, you better act fast.
Here are the tools I use (including backups, see Never Rely On a Single Point of Failure )
- By my bed I keep a notebook and two pens. One of these pens has a light on it so a can see without waking my wife. By the way, I need to buy another one, leave me a comment if you know a good source for these.
- In the shower (don’t you have some of your greatest ideas there?) I have a little white board that uses special waterproof crayons. I bought mine from Amazon but I don’t think they sell them anymore.
- For times when I’m in the car or otherwise not able to use both hands I use either jott or a digital recorder.
- At work and at home, I use Microsoft Outlook 2007
, Microsoft OneNote 2007
, and MindManager (Mindjet MindManager Pro 7 Single License
). And of course, I also use the Word, Excel, and PowerPoint (Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007
).
- When I get up from my desk at work, I pick up my legal pad and a pen. I started this practice years ago, when I was in the men’s room and a VP started giving me details on a project he wanted me to do.
- I also have my Blackberry with my almost all the time.
What about you? Is your system set up so that you can capture every though? What works for you?
Coming up: You Gotta Get It Off Your Mind - Part 3 - A Place For Everything
See also:
(For more posts like this one, visit my blog Tech Rest - Enjoying Technology and Finding Rest in a Restless World)
Related Stories
POSTED IN: change, gtd, management
17 opinions for You Gotta Get It Off Your Mind - Part 2
Jose Yong
Jul 27, 2007 at 9:04 am
I use the program: MyLife Organized, mainly on my Windows Mobile phone to capture everything and syncs it with the desktop version which also syncs with MS Outlook.
http://www.mylifeorganized.net/
“Time Management, more than anything else, means the planning and organizing of your time in such a way that you accomplish your most important goals as quickly as possible. Many people work very hard with no idea of what their real goals are… but others say that life without goals is like driving in an unfamiliar city without a roadmap”
Brian Carnell
Jul 27, 2007 at 9:59 am
Seconded on MLO, though to capture everything you’d have to have your pc/laptop/pda with you at all times (and the author of this piece can’t do that since the PDA version of MLO is Pocket PC/Winmobile only).
One of the nice things about MLO is it lets you easily organize very large numbers of tasks. Someone on another forum said I was missing the point of GTD because I have close to 2K items captured in my main MLO file. But once you have an app that really does let you get everything off your mind, why not take that literally and record/track everything.
Paul
Jul 27, 2007 at 11:40 am
RE: Whiteboard for the shower
If you don’t mind a little childlike whimsy in your life, Amazon still has you covered.
And if, like me, you’ve got small kids anyway, it’s perfect!
Travis
Jul 27, 2007 at 12:58 pm
HipsterPDA, work Blackberry, and Jott. That seems to keep me armed for thought capturing. I also use the Google Notebook add-on for Firefox. Very keen.
Craig Huggart
Jul 28, 2007 at 8:08 am
Thanks to all.
I will have to check out MyLifeOrganized and the kids shower board (I have 5, kids not shower).
BTW, I love jott!
Craig
Heather Ledeber
Jul 28, 2007 at 11:41 pm
This is great! I have that problem all the time (a great idea at the wrong time). I just bought the shower board and am looking into jott, thanks!
Craig Huggart
Jul 29, 2007 at 3:40 am
Heather:
Great to hear from you.
You are going to love jott!
I use the shower board all the time.
Glad you are reading.
Enjoy!
Craig
Laurel Zimmer
Jul 29, 2007 at 6:31 pm
I was just on the hunt for some of those pens too… A friend located this source for me. Hope they work for you!
Harold
Jul 29, 2007 at 10:48 pm
I have to second the love for Jott. GREAT app for capturing thoughts..on the fly, in the car, whatever! You can set it up to make entries into a blog even! Once you try it out…you’ll know…oh you’ll know! hehe
Craig Huggart
Jul 30, 2007 at 5:01 am
Laura:
Those will work great. Thanks so much.
Craig
Craig Huggart
Jul 30, 2007 at 5:08 am
Harold:
You rock! I had no idea that I could use jott for blog posts. Coo!
Thanks,
Craig
Harold
Jul 31, 2007 at 8:08 pm
Not a problem! I just thought I’d share the love! haha I was pretty impressed when I saw it myself. I’ve seen some that were REALLY well done and some pretty basic. But none the less…they were all done by JOTT. I haven’t tried one myself, being lazy and all haha BUT I’ve ran across so many of them..it MUST be that easy to do! Let me know if you get one started and let me know how easy it was…maybe that will motivate me! haha
AskBigPapa.com
Aug 2, 2007 at 5:30 am
I keep a section in my electronic planner called ‘Some Day Maybe’. I jot down everything I think of. Domain names, business ideas, stuff I want to do with my family.
Craig Huggart
Aug 2, 2007 at 2:37 pm
AskBigPapa:
Thanks for the feedback. Good idea!
Craig
Rolf F. Katzenberger
Aug 3, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Craig,
Interesting choice of tools! Would you like to share which ones actually get used? When you summarize, let’s say, the past 2 months, which of these capture tools received the most ideas, and which ones didn’t receive that many items? Why?
Rolf
Craig Huggart
Aug 4, 2007 at 3:58 am
Rolf:
Great question!
Jott is probably my number one tool for capturing ideas right now. I love it because it forces me to be brief and allows me to route the idea to work or home.
At the other extreme is the Shower Board. I probably only use it about once a week.
MindManager is something I am still learning. I use it for more formal brainstorming and planning. When I use it, I love it but I don’t use it that often.
Everything else is a part of my daily workflow.
Hope this helps,
Craig
WebedtecH
Aug 14, 2007 at 10:34 am
Capture it now…
…